Adventures during August 17 - 23, 2005

After 30 pitches spread over 6 days, I'm still alive and uninjured. And so is Dennis. We climbed in the alpine environment of Cannon, the slabs of Whitehorse and the face and cracks of Cathedral Ledge.

Thursday, August 17, 2005

We arrive at Cathedral around 4:30pm after nearly 10 hours of driving behind some of the worst drivers I've ever encountered. We head straight to the "ultra classic" Thin Air (5.6) line. Dennis leads P1 in his normal style: quick and with little protection, not that he had many choices for pro anyways. He then links in the traversing P2 to the exposed semi-hanging belay. We swap leads and I lead the "airy" P3 and crux P4 pitch which felt a little soft for a 6. The crux moves were nice: pull a bulge to an under cling at waist height, drop in a bomber, passive pink tricam, high step left and throw yourself into the flakes way out left and lie back. We get down in 2 raps, one of which we did at the same time. One 8.7mm going through a full size ATC is fast. We then headed over to Cannon and slept in the parking lot.

Friday, August 18, 2005

Wake up at 6am and make it to the base of the "mega classic" Lakeview (5.6) by 8:30am after scrambling through a giant boulder field. Dennis leads all 8 pitches, some of which were quite run out - that big boy #4 C4 came in handy a few times. Just like the guide book said, we had some route finding problems but we eventually found ourselves under the "now classic" 8th pitch dihedral. The first 10 feet was a left facing off width crack that the #4 C4 wouldn't even come close to fitting in. Dennis clips the pin on the slab under the off width just to make sure he didn't slide down the slab if he bombs the off width. He goes up and down a few times and eventually commits to making love to the rock to tackle the off width and enter the dihedral. The hands were good on the crack but there were no feet and it was steep. I lied back right with a smeared right foot and threw a left heel into the crack and cranked my way to the top. This was about as strenuous a 5.6 as the notorious Shockley's Ceiling. We topped out around 3:15pm and took the walk off back to the parking lot, where we camped again.

Saturday, August 19, 2005

At 5:40am I wake up to the violent shaking of my tent. Is this the cops kicking me out of the parking lot? No, its Dennis trying to get an early start as another team already arrived in the parking lot and we want to be the first ones on the rock. The other team left the parking lot and went home as the weather wasn't looking good. But that didn't stop us. After about 2 hours, most of which was spent traversing nearly a mile across the steep boulder fields, we arrived at the Whitney-Gilman Ridge (5.7), once the hardest climb in America. There was a chance of rain in the afternoon and we saw heavy clouds coming up from the south. The orange stretcher like thing used for rescues at the base of the climb didn't help my comfort level much either. We ignore the weather and rescue equipment and rack up. Dennis leads the first two pitches as one long 170 ft pitch. Good sustained climbing. I follow and pull out his last three pieces, all fixed pro and pins. To the left looked "too easy" but the overhung, nearly featureless face to my right looked too hard. Dennis, probably thinking I was lower on the climb, said go right. I'm only following, so what's it matter if I fall? Right? I reach way out right and match on an ok hold on the overhung face. Then I step my right foot out to a sloper, careful to stay low and keep my weight over my feet as I weight it. I think I see a left hand way up high so I swap feet and try to back step on my left foot. No, that's not going to work. I can probably drop my left knee, smear my right foot out right and then cross over left. Well, that didn't work either as soon as my right foot tries to smear it comes right off and I pop off the wall. I try again with similar luck. Screw it, I just go left up the easy way (which we later found out was the actually route. God only knows what I was on). You can imagine how thrilled I was to see I fell on an anchor consisting of just a #1 camalot in a vertical crack. It's a little after 9am and the clouds are coming in heavy. 4 pitches left. Should we bail? Let's get a weather report. I had a cell phone and it had service. I tried a few people and luckily Guy was up and near a computer this early on a Saturday. Guys said rain at 10am. So we bail. One two rope rap got us to the ground. We then had a long, strenuous, wet scramble back to the parking lot. The guidebook says Cannon is "a place for experienced climbers to test their skills, not for beginners to learn the basics" and to watch for weather changes, loose rock and route finding problems. The guidebook doesn't lie. We killed the rest of the day in North Conway, where we ate at Coyote Rose "Food with Flare." We then camped in Cathedral's parking area.

Sunday, August 20, 2005

Another day, another adventure. Wake up at 6:30am and screw around in town and at Echo Lake waiting for the cliffs to dry. Around 2pm, we head to Whitehorse to climb Standard Route (5.5), the "most climbed route in New Hampshire." Standard "has it's share of epics every year" and we were no exception. I lead P1 and P2 with little problems except for dropping my buck knife when sliding my nut tool down the rope to Dennis. I then lead up the right facing corner of P3 and try to traverse right over the corner in search of bolts to belay from. Well after traversing about 40 feet with out pro, I wind up 10 feet above the bolts in no mans land. I traverse all the way back left (scary) and continue up the corner looking for a pin to belay from. I didn't find a pin but I found lots of wet slab I was suppose to traverse over. No thanks. Lower me. Dennis takes the lead, leads P3 and P4 under the wet traverse and to the belay stance that I was literally 10 feet from. Dennis then leads P5. I lead P6, the crux, "brown spot" pitch. The guidebook gives a good description of the pitch and says "expect route finding problems." I probably should have read this before heading off for the lead. I chase after a pin, clip it then try going up and left for about 15 feet. I pop my head over an overlay and it looks scary so I downclimb past the pin and go right, heading for a bolt. I make a delicate move onto the "brown spot," clip the bolt and hang on it to see where I was suppose to go next. Dennis talks some trash for hanging on the bolt and I head up to the steep overlays that make up the "crux." I cruise thru them and traverse out right to belay at a tree and avoid lots of wet slab which of course, I was going to make Dennis lead. Now on P7, Dennis leads the wet slab, avoiding most of it and sets up a belay off of a single bolt. There goes my request for a "good" anchor." I then lead P8 and P9 together (5.2 R, I thought it was more like 5.0 X). I had three pieces of pro for about 250 ft of climbing. Once the rope ran out, Dennis climbed up behind me. We reach the summit (800 ft) and decide to rap off. There's not really a rappel route down from the submit but as long as Dennis was willing to rap first, I was game. We do three raps, off three trees, through lots of crap and manage not to get our ropes stuck. We then reach bolted anchors. We're about 350 ft off the deck, it's dark, we don't have headlamps, and we only sort of know where we're going. Sounds like a great time to rap at the same time. We each take a side of the rope, rap down and find more bolts! Thank God. We rap again, this time with no bolts in sight was we reach the end of ropes. In tradition Dennyg style, we rap off the ends of our ropes on purpose and down climb 70 ft of easy slab.

Monday, August 21, 2005

We started this stellar day of climbing by pigging out at the Blueberry Muffin. For the first climb of the day, Dennis leads Bombardment (5.8, 5.6 R), a stellar hand crack. The team behind us said Dennis "made nice work of it." Unlike his normal style, Dennis sewed up the 5.8 section with a piece every three feet. Next, I lead Upper Refuse (5.5) in two long pitches. This is the most well protected route I've every lead, bomber passive tricams and stoppers everywhere. I even placed the #4. We meet Jake who was rope soloing a 5.8 next to us. He said he was going do Nutcracker (5.10a) next and we could TR on his rope. Topping out on the other side of the fenced in overlook was fun. I didn't expect a lot of tourists since it was Monday but there was about 30 of them up there when I popped up on the other side of the fence. Lots of them took pictures and video and the one girl is supposed to email us some pictures (she did). Dennis said "I ate it up." Dennis and I head over to Nutcracker, which was in use but we found Jake on Double V (5.9+, and you know what that means). Double V took Dennis and I both to school on TR. Jake then told us about some routes he'd like to lead. We headed over to something AP (5.8), which look liked it hasn't been climbed all summer. The first protection was a bolt at 30 ft. After taking a few moments, Jake danced very carefully up to the bolt and clipped. We later found out he was off-route on a 5.10c climb. Jim took a few small falls on the bolt and got back on route. Jake then lead Brown Fist (5.7+ or 5.9+, depending on which guidebook you believe, felt like 5.8+ if you ask me). This climbs a corner to a roof that you traverse under, then up - sounds like a Gunks climb. The crux traverse was way cool. Left hand side-pull palm down, right hand side-pull with good thumb on top, smeared feet on steep, featureless face. Bring your feet way up, jam your head up against the roof and reach way right for a great flake and crank. Or at least that's how I did it. Dennis wouldn't stop laughing at me and is upset he didn't have his camera. To end the day we ate the best pizza in the world at Flatbread and then camped at Cathedral again.

Tuesday, August 22, 2005

Wake up at 6:30am and meet up with Jake. We head to the south buttress of Whitehorse, which has steep crack climbs as opposed to the low angle slabs of most Whitehorse routes. We climb Inferno (5.8). Dennis leads P1, then Jake leads P2 which had a nice crux lying back over this bulge. Dennis sets off to lead the money pitch, hand crack P3. When Dennis enters the crux section, he realizes that Jake's rack doesn't have a lot of the gear, he wanted to protect it so he gets lowered. Jake then leads up the sustained crack, placing some nice gear that Dennis and I had a hell of a time removing. We called it an early day and headed to the swimming hole. We then topped the day off by eating pizza at Flatbread again - their pizza is just that good. We arrive back in my neighborhood around 1am.